“Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” now playing on theatres, kicks off Marvel’s phase five with a talky sci fi story, heavy on the scientific blather. Instead of “Quantumania,” a more appropriate subtitle could have been: More Fun Than Physics Class!
“It’s a pretty good world,” says Scott Lang (Paul Rudd), a.k.a. Ant-Man. He’s a member of the Avengers, gifted with the power of size manipulation and some funny dialogue. “I’m glad I saved it.” Basking in the glow of his heroic contributions to mankind, he’s written a book titled “Look Out for the Little Guy,” and shamelessly drinks in the praise of his friends and fans.
His family, however, thinks he is resting on his laurels, and, in secret, are still working on ways to help the planet. His romantic partner Hope van Dyne, a.k.a. Wasp (Evangeline Lilly), daughter Cassie (Kathryn Newton) and the original Ant-Man Hank Pym (Michael Douglas), have created a sort of satellite for deep space, except it connects them to the Quantum Realm, a subatomic level where the realities of space and time don’t exist.
Having spent 30 years trapped in the subatomic world, Hope’s mother Janet (Michelle Pfeiffer) is horrified by their experiments. “Do you know how dangerous the Quantum Realm is? Turn it off now.”
Of course, Cassie and Co learn too late that the connection to the Quantum Realm goes both ways, and they are all sucked into the satellite and transported to the strange world, a place that looks like a Yes album cover from 1973 come to life.
Separated into two groups, Scott and Cassie are captured by freedom fighters led by Jentorra (Katy O’Brian), while Hope, Hank and Janet are cut loose, on the run from Janet’s old nemesis, a destroyer of worlds called Kang the Conqueror (Jonathan Majors).
Kang needs the Pym Particles, the subatomic particles developed by Hank which can increase or reduce mass as well as density and strength, to exit the Quantum Realm and travel through time and bring havoc to the real world.
Only Ant-Man and his ragtag gang can stop him and his interdimensional threat, but only if they can navigate the Quantum Realm and come together as a group.
There is a lightness of touch to “Quantumania.” Rudd’s charisma sees to that, and he provides some genuinely funny moments in the film. Majors brings the secret sauce as a great cartoon villain, but the talky script and messy action scenes suck away much of the fun.
You may be thinking, “But Michael Douglas talks to a giant ant. How can that be bad?” True enough, it is something I never would have expected to see, and I got a kick out of it, but for every nifty moment like that, there is sea of exposition, as if the filmmakers don’t trust the audience to understand what is happening unless it is spelled out for them.
The loud, CGI-overload climax fills the screen but doesn’t grab the imagination. There are cool creatures and action enough for any two movies, but it all feels thrown at the screen, willy-nilly. There is a lot of it, but none of it is memorable or particularly original.
“Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” is a let-down, a movie that feels more like an introduction to the next batch of MCU movies than a standalone.
The only thing big and green in Mark Ruffalo’s new film “Dark Waters are the hulking wads of cash a major corporation is willing to pay to cover up an ecological disaster.
Based on true events, Ruffalo plays corporate defense lawyer Robert Bilott, a native West Virginian now working for an upscale Cincinnati firm. He makes a living defending big companies but when Wilbur Tennant (Bill Camp), a friend of his grandmother shows up complaining that chemical giant Dupont is poisoning his livestock, Bilott is at a loss for words. “I defend chemical companies,” he stuitters. “Well, now you can defend me,” replies the plainspoken Wilbur.
Bilott knows the farm. As a kid he rode horses and milked his first cow there and even though the he doesn’t think he can help, he agrees to have a look. On the land he finds horrifying things. 190 cows dead, many born with birth defects and tumors. Wilbur is convinced that runoff from a nearby landfill is responsible. What was once a pastoral paradise is now a poisoned plot of land.
To paraphrase the famous John Denver song, country roads lead Bilott back home to place he belongs, defending a farmer done wrong by a conglomerate more concerned with profit than people.
“Dark Waters” is about accountability. Bilott spends more than a decade of his life, putting his health and family life at risk to take a corporate Goliath to task for their irresponsible behavior. Ruffalo does a good job at portraying the Bilott’s decline as he is worn down by the tactics of his foe, the impatience of the people he is trying to help and his inability to force the power brokers to play fair. It humanizes a story that otherwise would be a high level legal procedural.
Director Todd Haynes shoots the story in drab tones that echo much of the colorless work—i.e. cataloguing the mountain of paper sent over by Dupont in the form of discovery. It doesn’t make for a compelling looking film but it helps set the scene and tone. Fighting back isn’t glamourous work. It’s about late nights, crappy food and a constant feeling of exhaustion.
“Dark Waters” isn’t a thriller. From the first frame there is no question about who is guilty. The question here is how guilty and will they ever pay for what they have done? It is geared to outage and infuriate, to underscore that the big guys don’t always win. It is marred by a leisurely approach and some paper-thin characterizations, but the David and Goliath story is compelling.
“Midsommar,” the creepy new film from “Heredity” director Ari Aster, is proof positive that not all scary stuff happens under the cover of darkness. Sometimes daylight can illuminate the true horror of a situation in even more terrifying ways.
In the wake of a family tragedy American grad student Dani (Florence Pugh) finds out about her aloof boyfriend’s Christian (Jack Reynor) secret holiday, a trip to Sweden. Christian has one foot outside the relationship but half-heartedly asks her along. “I invited Dani to come to Sweden,” he tells his friends, “just to not make it weird. She’s not actually coming.”
But she does go with Jack and fellow anthropology students Josh (William Jackson Harper), a PhD student gathering info for his thesis, and wannabe-playboy Mark (Will Poulter) to a midnight sun celebration in the remote hometown of school mate Pelle (Vilhelm Blomgren). “It’s sort of a crazy festival,” Pelle says. “It only happens every ninety years. Lots pf pageantry, special ceremonies and dressing up.”
The festival is a Scandinavian Coachella, complete with dancing, pan-flute music and hallucinogenic drugs, all under a blazing sun that never sets. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime thing and I wanted to share it with my friends,” Pelle says. “People I know would appreciate it.”
At first it’s hospitable—”Welcome and happy Midsommar,” says the Ceremony Leader. “Skål!”—but after the and fun and games—and psychotropic mushrooms—start to wear off a gradual air of menace settles over the proceedings as the tone shifts from Burning Man to “The Wicker Man” as a secret pagan agenda is revealed.
“Midsommar” is a tough movie to categorize. It’s not exactly a horror film although there are some horrifying moments. It’s more the story of Dani, a woman trapped in a loveless relationship, (SPOILER ALERT) who lost one family only to find another under very strange circumstances. Elements of high school rom coms and revenge films echo throughout.
Aster, a master of mood, slowly unveils how the unusual customs of the villagers unsettle their American guests. His film asks questions about the relationship the Swedes have with their surroundings and traditions. The circle of life brings joy for them, not terror and the pious, matter-of-fact way they deal with death as a sacrament suggests the North Americans fear the situation simply because they don’t understand the customs. Are they the ultimate Ugly Americans or are they actually in danger? That’s the push and pull that builds the tension leading up to the explosive climax.
“Midsommar” may be the definition of ‘not for everyone.’ A colleague, who has sat through more movies with me than either of us could possibly remember, declared it one of the worst films she’s ever seen. But that is the subjectivity of art, the polarizing nature of a film that doesn’t easily fit into any definable category.
Paterson, the new movie from director Jim Jarmusch is a week in the life of Paterson, the man and the place.
Adam Driver plays Paterson, a poetry writing New Jersey bus driver from Paterson, New Jersey. He lives with Laura (Golshifteh Farahani), a dreamer who wants to open a cupcake shop and make them rich and their dog Marvin.
Paterson is a wonderfully leisurely movie. There are small conflicts sprinkled throughout, a bus breaks down and lovers quarrel, but Paterson isn’t about that. It’s about gentle, loving performances from Driver and Farahani and the beauty of overheard conversations and the day-to-day of regular life.
After the success of Star Wars and everything else you’ve been in recently, you must get offered every script out there. Why choose this one?
Jim [Jarmusch]. It’s a director’s medium so if I get lucky enough to work with great directors, that’s the only thing as far as a game plan I have. I have gotten to do that with really great people and it feels good. I’m lucky in that I get to choose things now, but choose things from what I’m offered. The scale doesn’t matter.
So it doesn’t matter whether you’re shooting for twenty days or you’re gone for six months? Is it just the love of acting?
Yes. It’s a very strange job. It seems you get to do your job twenty percent of the time and then you talk about it forever. For me the doing of it is the best. The things surrounding it don’t matter. Trailers, money, they don’t matter if you get to work with really great people. Then hopefully what you’re making is bigger than any one person and it feels relevant, as much as you can attach meaning to your job. The love of collaborating with people who are on the same page and want to make the best version of it is really exciting.
I think you can attach meaning. Movies like this are worth talking about…
I don’t like to say what meaning I attach to my work. Half of the experience of watching a play or something in a movie theatre is that everyone is coming from somewhere else. No one lives inside the movie theatre. They’re bring all their baggage and if they’re coming there not ready to be affected then they probably won’t be affected. But whatever meaning they pick out of the movie, that means something to them or doesn’t mean anything to them, is completely subjective.
A movie like Paterson is a beautiful slice of life but it is probably going to speak to the audience that will be very different from say, Suicide Squad, but Paterson isn’t going to make $165 million in its opening weekend.
WHAT?!
But for me that makes it valid and interesting.
Really great movies have a longer shelf life. You come back to them later and find new things in them. So many times, and this is so obvious, you watch a movie and you’re not ready for it and you come back to it later because you’re a different person and suddenly it speaks to you in a different way. When they are well crafted they have that shelf life whereas a lot of things are made for one weekend.
The new Jim Jarmusch movie is a week in the life of Paterson, the man and the place.
Adam Driver is Paterson, a poetry writing New Jersey bus driver from Paterson, New Jersey. He lives with Laura (Golshifteh Farahani), a dreamer who wants to open a cupcake shop and make them rich or, maybe, become a country singer and their dog Marvin.
For Paterson, every day is pretty much the same as the lone before it. He wakes up early and eats Cheerios before packing a lunch into a metal lunch box and heading to work. A William Carlos Williams—the famous New Jersey poet—fan, he pens carefully worded free verse poems in an ever present notebook. The only things that change in Paterson’s life are the ever-shifting faces of his passengers and Laura’s career choices. When she isn’t painting black-and-white geometric designs on every surface of their small home she is dreaming about whatever it is that may come next for her. When his notebook is damaged Paterson must rediscover the possibilities of the blank page.
“Paterson” is a wonderfully leisurely movie. It’s not in a hurry to get where it is going, instead luxuriating in the mundane aspects of Paterson’s life punctuated by on-screen depictions of his poetry. What could have been insufferable turns into a beautifully rendered portrait of people who find beauty and art in every day life.
There are small conflicts sprinkled throughout, a bus breaks down and lovers quarrel, but “Paterson” isn’t about that. It’s about gentle, loving performances from Driver and Farahani and the beauty of overheard conversations and the day to day of regular life.
